Offspring Read Online Free PDF Page B

pretty far away.”
    “Naked?”
    “From the waist up, anyway. I couldn’t see the rest.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Unh-unh.”
    “Nice breasts?”
    “As I said, she was pretty far away.”
    “Hmmm.”
    She got up from the monitor and walked over to him. She put her arms around his waist.
    “You didn’t invite her in?”
    “Why should I? Who wants the wood nymph when you got the goddess?”
    She laughed. “Pretty saggy goddess.”
    “Goddesses don’t sag. They ripen. As do the wheat and the corn.”
    “Corn is just about right.”
    She kissed him. He smelled of soap and coffee. His mouth was smooth.
    “I’m not going to get much work done, am I?” she said.
    “Not at the moment. And I’m not going to get to insulate the wire.”
    “Let’s not wake Melissa.”
    “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on running the Electrolux either.”
    He opened her robe, pushed it off her shoulders and lowered her on top of him to the couch, and the sun was warm on her back as she drew him up inside her.
    She remembered that the monitor was still on, her program running.
    It was the last thought she had for a while that wasn’t strictly for the two of them.

11:50 A.M.
    Peters stood in the mouth of the cave, sweating. It wasn’t just the climb. It was nerves.
    Behind him Manetti, Harrison, and the four state troopers were jittery too. You could see it in the beams of their flashlights scudding across the fire-blackened walls.
    Even if you didn’t know what happened here the place was unnerving.
    He shouldered the shotgun, knowing already he wasn’t going to be needing it, and stepped inside.
    Remembering what it was like.
    The man, Nicholas something, the name strangely lost to him now, wearing glasses that flew off his face as they opened fire, mistaking him for one of them despite the glasses, they were so damn scared, killing him after all he’d been through, after he and the woman on the floor, naked, bleeding, torn to hell but still alive, had done most of theirkilling for them. He remembered
shooting the one with the knife
.
    And then he remembered the boy
. . .
    . . .
who’d been their captive god only knew how long, walking toward them, his arms held out in front of him, walking in that slow dreamy glide, so filthy and caked with his own dried blood that it was easy to figure he was one of them too, and when Peters told him to stop and he didn’t stop they were taking no chances by then and all six shotguns opened up at once, and whether Peters had killed him or somebody else had killed him Peters would never know
.
    That was eleven years ago and he was glad he’d stopped for the pint of Johnny Walker. He was glad he wasn’t a cop anymore, that he could pull the pint out of his pocket and break the seal and unscrew it and tilt it back and drink deep. Like he was doing now.
    The others were watching. Rookie troopers cradling newer shotguns, disapproving.
    Fuck ’em.
    He was glad he wasn’t a cop for lots of reasons.
    But especially the boy.
    He needed not to think about the boy.
    He drank again and pocketed the bottle and looked around.
    It was gone now—the skins, the rags, the clothing. They’d taken it all to the beach, right down to the last broken ax handle, the last gun stock, rake and leather belt, and burned it two days later. What didn’t burn and what they didn’t need to bag for identification they took to the old town dump on Tucker Road where most of it had come from in the first place.
    Now all he saw here were a few bent nails and a tarnished doorknob on the hard dirt floor and that was that.
    They hadn’t been back. Not to this place.
    Who knew? Maybe they had memories too.
    “Shit,” said Manetti.
    They were all, in their way, disappointed. Relieved, sure. But disappointed. It had been so easy for him to find this place again even after eleven years without so much as passing it by in all that time that Peters guessed they figured they were getting lucky. And now they weren’t